Snowed Under

No, I’m not digging out from an anomalous May snowstorm, but I do feel quite overwhelmed by end-of-the-year paperwork.  Like other teachers, I have mostly assessments and annual school wide forms to complete this time of year.  My pre-k program has additional sets of the former handed down by the district and the state.

The state mandates the use of ELAS, a performance-based assessment system focusing on six language arts/literacy expectations. Normally, I would not voice concerns about ELAS; despite the tedious paperwork involved, it has been very helpful as a tool for targeting the strengths and weaknesses of my students.  My concern is this: the collection period for ELAS ends in June, but my support person from the Office of Early Childhood has insisted we hand in the paperwork nearly a month earlier. Why? My guess is because other pre-k sites have been delinquent in handing in paperwork on time in the past.

The problem with this creative revision of the ELAS timetable is threefold:

1.    This time of year many pre-k students start to demonstrate remarkable academic progress, especially those who entered pre-k younger than the other students.  If we stop collecting anecdotes and work samples from those children in mid-May (to ensure we can finish the paperwork before Memorial Day), we may fail to capture this growth and, thereby, provide the state, our schools, and parents with inaccurate results.

2.    We are also responsible for a social skill checklist and the district’s experimental assessment forms (requiring the collection of anecdotes covering over 30 expectations) in the same time frame.  Now, I am all for an Amazing Race-style challenge for teachers to balance three assessment systems, simultaneously, while also instructing students.  But, if we are really in early childhood for the children and not just to satisfy the sadistic cravings of paperwork hungry bureaucrats, we should think realistically about how our demands on teachers affect their ability to perform in the classroom.

3.    I have always handed in paperwork on time along with additional individualized action plans for my students.  If the folks at the Office of Early Childhood were as organized and well managed as they should be, they would put additional pressure only on those teachers who need it.  In a sense, they should differentiate their approach to employees in the same way that they require teachers to differentiate our approach for the varying needs of our students.

Well, I have to go now…because this paperwork is not going to fill out itself.

Not all Assessments are Created Equal

Recent debate over Head Start’s National Reporting System got me thinking about the challenges of assessing what three and four year olds know and what they have learned from their pre-k teachers. Early Stories sums up the NRS debate with some great examples.

Not being a Head Start teacher myself, I have never administered the NRS.  I am required, however, to use the Brigance screening in the beginning of each school year to identify developmental delays.  While some of the sections are helpful (e.g., following two and three step directions; fine motor and gross motor evaluations), many of the questions seem to measure a child’s exposure to certain words and objects rather than development.  For example, in one section Brigance asks the child to identify a picture of a tractor.  I personally fail to see how the inability of a four year old from the inner city to identify a tractor indicates any sort of delay in her development.  The test also requires children to identify several body parts including the jaw and ankle, a stretch for any four year old in my opinion. 

I think my ideal pre-k assessment tool would breakdown the four areas of child development (i.e., social/emotional; physical; cognitive; and language) and be able to measure each of those components regardless of a child’s background.  Unlike the Brigance screening, such an assessment may have to be partially or entirely performance-based since a child may not reveal the full extent of his problem-solving or language skills in a single one-to-one interaction at the start of the year.  A teacher can, however, observe a child within the context of play with materials and areas the child has chosen. 

Creative Curriculum’s assessment system is entirely performance-based, uses the “developmental continuum” to assess all four areas of development, and is both the most comprehensive and least biased assessment I have seen.  While it can be quite helpful in providing information about your students, it is not necessarily the most accessible data for kindergarten teachers to use the following year, so I do think the more traditional assessments (e.g., letter identification, book handling checklist) have a role to play. 

Whose Curriculum is it Anyway?

Curricula decisions in pre-k affect everything from what students learn to how they learn it.  While many early childhood curricula promote developmentally appropriate practices, I believe some, particularly the scripted programs, fail to capitalize on the “teachable moments” that occur every day in the classroom.  As one blog reader recently commented, a scripted program "doesn't really get to high level thinking questions, doesn't address the needs of kids in individual classrooms.".

To be sure, a highly passionate and organized teacher can make the most of any curriculum.  But the ability of teachers to adjust specific curricula often depends on a school’s or center’s relationships with the district, company, or other organization it reports to and teachers’ relationships with their direct supervisors.

I recognized the strengths and limitations of the previous curriculum my district used, Curiosity Corner, and engaged my students in meaningful dialogue that came out of our own discussions, regardless of the exact questions the curriculum manual prescribed.  This worked largely because my supervisors did not micromanage my classroom, not a benefit every teacher has.

When it came to handling a curriculum switch, my district notified the pre-k teachers of the new curriculum during a summer workshop about a month and a half before school started.  Prior to the announcement, we knew only that district officials in the Office of Early Childhood had been vacillating between a few curricula.  We were never informed of possible opportunities to voice our opinions based on classroom experiences.  Clearly, teacher input and evaluation time were not top priorities.

I think my experience with curriculum decisions is hardly unique and begs important questions, like “What role, if any, should teachers play in choosing a curriculum?”

Any teachers, administrators, or curricula authors who want to take a crack at answering that one?  I’m sure we can improve matters if we put our heads together.

To Teach or to Assess? Is that Really the Question?

David pulled a toy car back and forth and as he released the car said, “Look Tyrique!  The car going down the road fast.  We gonna have a race.”

As I heard David refer to cars and racing, my ears perked up.  I had just completed small group and was preparing to circulate our classroom’s interest areas to collect anecdotes showing the children’s progress and to seize some great teachable moments.  We are currently exploring transportation, and David was incorporating ideas from class discussions and “read alouds” into his play.  While I often have to refer to my individualized student action plans to remember the specific target areas for each child, David has struggled to pick up on this listening skill for some time, so I knew instantly that it was a breakthrough moment.

Last year, when I first started using the performance-based assessment system, I typically spent the first couple weeks of each collection period working with children using their individual plans, rather than taking anecdotes.  As I have become more comfortable with performance-based assessments and familiar with my students’ needs, my approach has become less compartmentalized.  I can now simultaneously assess progress and work with children on other skill areas.  I responded to David with questions leading into an informal one-on-one lesson on print awareness and vocabulary.

Ms. Pappas: Great, David, how can we make it go faster?  Is there something we can use?
David: Uhh, I don’t know.
Ms. Pappas: What if we used a ramp?  Do you know where it is?
David (shrugging his shoulders): No.
Ms. Pappas: You know what, I sometimes forget where it is too.  Is there something we could put on the ramp so we know it is a ramp?
David: I don’t know.
Ms. Pappas: Well, how do you know the hats go here?
David (sweeping his finger from left to right over the label for hats): Because it says “hats.”  Hats, hats, /h/, /h/ hats.  I see the letter h!
Ms. Pappas: So what could we do for the ramp?
David (grabbing a paper and marker): We could write it.
Ms. Pappas: Great idea.  What should we write for ramp?
David (writing the letter “R”): /rr/ R!  Like Ryan!

The next day David came to me briefly after entering blocks and, with a strong sense of urgency in his tone asked, “Ms. Pappas, where’s the ramp for the cars?  I want to make them go fast.”  The other pre-k teacher unfortunately needed to borrow the ramp, but David was able to construct his own ramp using flat boards from memory.

As I prepare for parent-teacher conferences this week, I notice dozens of other instances like this one, where a more efficient and dynamic exchange between teaching and assessing has resulted in more substantial student progress.  That’s not to say that the state or district should inundate teachers with more assessments to maximize teacher quality.  There is a tipping point.  Yet the question I often hear at teacher workshops - “When am I going to have a chance to teach with all these anecdotal assessments?” - presents a false dichotomy between the two.

Which Came First, the Assessment or the Children?

Ravon: Ms. Pappas, look, I found the word calcium on my milk.

Ms. Pappas: Wow!  Great job, Ravon.  How do you know it says calcium?

Ravon: Because I see the letter “C” with the other words like “cat” and “car.”

At this moment, I am thinking three things:

1. I am so proud of Ravon;
2. How fast can I write down exactly what he said on my clipboard, so I can use this exchange as evidence of his growth in early literacy?; and
3. How will I ever balance active teacher-student engagement with anecdotal note taking if the school district requires me to collect anecdotes on another 50 skills for still another assessment system?

While I appreciate the value of performance-based assessments in helping me target individual student needs, I also sometimes wonder if a drive to make assessment as comprehensive and in-depth as possible comes at the expense of quality teacher-student interaction.  I am not sure if state and district policymakers realize what their mandates look like on a day-to-day basis at the school level.

In my school, we now have four types of assessment, soon to be joined by a fifth:

1. The Early Learning Assessment System (ELAS) – a state mandated performance-based literacy assessment charting student growth in six areas.  Reported three times per year.
2. A district mandated checklist charting growth in the areas of social emotional, gross motor, and fine motor development.  Recorded twice per year.
3. A district mandated beginning of the year Brigance Screening used mainly to identify any developmental delays.
4. Math checklists from the district mandated math curriculum charting growth in various skill areas. Recorded three times per year (recommended but not required).

Recently, the pre-k teachers in the district had a workshop on Creative Curriculum’s comprehensive performance-based assessment, which covers 50 skills and is recorded three times per year.  I personally like Creative Curriculum’s assessment the most and hope the district will replace other assessments with it.  All signs, however, suggest the district will make it supplemental and, therefore, probably more cumbersome than helpful, despite its potential to hone in on a wide range of student needs.

I would love to hear about teachers’ and administrators’ experiences in other states and school districts - just post a comment and we can compare and discuss.

Creative Thinking, Simple Resources

Whoever thought a big brown box could prove so exciting for four year olds and such a valuable teaching tool? Unlike other pre-kindergarten teachers in inner city areas, I am fortunate to have plenty of funds for classroom resources allocated by the great state of New Jersey.  Yet I have also learned that even the most simple and inexpensive resources can offer learning experiences equally as, if not more, rich than commercially bought toys.

This past week we explored boxes, and the students’ creativity took off. They transformed plain cardboard from the school cafeteria, my apartment, and the apartments of several friends into everything from a house where they could live with their family and friends to an enormous hat for Cat in the Hat. Their great ideas spawned discussions about parts of the house to add, common behaviors of a famous literary characters including The Cat in the Hat and the peddler from Caps for Sale, and even what I can only define as a precursor to some intense union negotiations. When an imaginary hurricane destroyed my roof, the students’ team of engineers said they could no longer work to repair it because the time was eight o’clock.

I can’t wait to see what they do with old newspapers and bottle caps. Oh, the possibilities…